Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
A number of scientific methods have been developed in the medical field to evaluate physiological conditions of a person by detecting and/or measuring one or more analytes in a person's blood or other bodily fluids or tissues. The one or more analytes could be any analytes that, when present in or absent from the blood, or present at a particular concentration or range of concentrations, may be indicative of a medical condition or health state of the person. The one or more analytes could include enzymes, reagents, hormones, proteins, cells or other molecules, such as carbohydrates, e.g., glucose.
In a typical scenario, a person's blood is drawn and either sent to a lab or input into a handheld testing device, such as a glucose meter, where one or more tests are performed to measure various analyte levels and parameters in the blood. The frequency and regularity of such blood tests can depend on the type of test and the nature of the condition or conditions being monitored. For example, testing for blood glucose concentration for a person with diabetes may be performed relatively frequently.